GITAR - '09 (Jazzland Recordings)
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SMOKIN' REVIEW FROM "ALL
ABOUT JAZZ"
"Knut
Reiersrud plays the blues." This simple statement is a truism
that rolls out of critical pens all too easily, and tends to mask
the fact that Knut Reiersrud is a great deal more than your common-or-garden
variety blues guitarist. His playing distinguishes itself not only
by his deep understanding and command of the blues in all its facets,
but in the range of emotion he manages to express within it. He
incorporates elements from different traditions, perhaps most notably
those from Norwegian folk and church music, yet maintains a balance
quite unique among his peers in that he doesn't merely blend the
mechanics of the music, but instead enmeshes the spiritual elements
these diverse musics have in common. In this sense, rather than
a straight player, he is a bold interpreter, creating something
new, uniquely his own.
On this, his first Jazzland Recordings release, his interpretive
and expressive skills are brought to the fore. From the opening
track, "Mohan Vina", it is clear that this is something
special. Each note that comes from Reiersrud's guitar is there for
a good reason: no note is wasted or unnecessary - which isn't to
say that the music is spare or typically "nordic" as many
critics these days like to say. This is warm-blooded, passionate
music. Tracks like "Hard Times Killing Floor" embrace
the blues fully, but are more like distant cousins of the Mississippi
Delta sound than some Friday night post-1960s shoebox emulation
like we have become not only accustomed to, but immune to. On "Magnolia",
we are invited into an interior sound world, a coupling of Reiersrud's
guitar and Nils Petter Molvaer's trumpet, melancholic and beautiful,
never self-indulgent: the music again conforms to a level of quality
without becoming sterile as it would so easily become in the hands
of a lesser musician. By contrast, "Gorrlausen" growls
its way into the listener's consciousness before transmuting itself
to a bright Bert Jansch-like summerday folk and back and forth to
its growl by turns: a showpiece that neither over declares itself
nor outstays its welcome. "Tamil" offers, alongside the
earlier track, "Eleanor Cross", haunting echoes of what
made Ry Cooder great, and is a soundtrack to a movie you've longed
to see, but has yet to be made. The combination of almost sitar-like
slide guitar and santour is truly evocative and beautiful. More
urban, and perhaps sharing more ground with jazz than other tracks
on the album is the superb "The Hook", a monolithic centrepiece,
with drums, bass, rhodes piano and hammond organ supplied by Bugge
Wesseltoft, and electric guitar playing that teases its way through,
reminding us of the best blues that Jimi Hendrix produced during
his "Electric Ladyland" period. Again, nothing appears
in excess, yet never feels overstretched or overly frugal. It's
about the music, that Chicago-style blue groove, and Reiersrud's
love of this sound is more than apparent, but doesn't overspill
into crassly overblown reverence. With "Waltz", we are
returned to an acoustic world, and once again, the music speaks
clearly and without pretense or bombast, instead telling its own
little tale clearly. "Low Swing" has a definably hymn-like
feel, with Reiersrud's understated electric blues nuzzling in comfortably
as if it should always have been part of such music. However, the
listener is given a little surprise when the track suddenly evolves
its own special groove, fingersnapping along cooly and confidently
with just enough swagger to conjure up a closed-eye head-nodding
smile. "Spanking the Plank/In A Key Between D n E" perhaps
breaks most with the rest of the album, but never strays so far
as to feel like a stranger in its midst. Perhaps the most definably
"Norse" track on the album in tone and delivery, it still
feels like it has grown from a blues tradition, melodic, punchy
and somehow retaining a fluidity and drama that many musicians strive
towards but rarely achieve. The final track, "Epilog"
brings us into more haunting territory that carries us through that
rarely visited space between jazz and blues, more minimalistic in
tone, yet emotionally charged with a certain positivity: all too
often musicians choose this feeling to express a darkness, or perhaps
even a negativity of some kind; instead Reiersrud takes the opportunity
to make a piece from these materials that is like the bittersweet
closing of a celebration. In total, Reiersrud's "Gitar"
is an expressive (not expressionistic) journey through a musical
mind and soul that has found a kind of harmony that few manage.
For Jazzland Recordings, it is yet another masterpiece in its catalogue.
Superb!
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